Re: Testing XY Output.

Well - it requires a particular type of oscilloscope that can read two
signals and combine them to be the equivalent of an xy monitor. The great
thing about them is they all have scaling factors for the input so if the
output from the xy board is too "hot" you can easily adjust it and no harm
is done the scope.

In particular - I have an ancient Tektronix 454 O-scope that I've been using
for years. It is dual channel, and has the ability to switch into "x-y"
reading. There even is a Z input for intensity clipping.

Perhaps the neatest thing is that you can actually play the game on the
scope as if it were a real monitor. If you needed just to test a board this
is the way I recommend because there will be no risk in harming a known good
monitor. This is particularly important when you have an original Amplifone
monitor and don't want to fry it because locating a replacement that works
is very costly $$$$.

As far as pictures -- do you mean the screenshots from a monitor or scope,
or locations of test points on a particular board? If you are wondering
about the latter question it is almost always documented in the service
manuals for a particular game. Atari was very good at providing excellent
documentation for games, and most manuals can be found at the Wiretap
archive.

If you do a search for "wiretap arcade" you should come up with the site.
The actual URL is eluding my mind right now.

-- Chris Starr

Hopefully this answers your question.

----- Original Message -----
From: <DBT4251@aol.com>
To: <vectorlist@synthcom.com>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 2:55 AM
Subject: VECTOR: Testing XY Output.

> I have read some horror stories on this group about bad boards harming
good
> monitors. (You know bad always trying to hurt the good) Anyway, someone
said
> something about hooking the X & Y output to an Oscope and "seeing" the
> picture on the scope screen. (Is any of this even partially right so far?)
> and that if you could see output, it was safe to hook it to the monitor.
> That asked, here are a few questions:
> 1) How would you hook it to an Oscope?
> 2) Is there potential harm to the Oscope?
> 3) Is there any place on the web with photos of all of the Vectors so that
I
> can tell which ones I have since most are missing their stickers?
> Thanks again from the VV (Vector Virgin) - Dean
>

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Received on Fri Oct 5 04:31:25 2001